Who is Nicolas Maduro, Successor to Venezuelan Prez Chavez?

Vice President Nicolas Maduro is taking over leadership of Hugo Chavez’s political movement after the socialist leader died Tuesday at age 58 following a nearly two-year bout with cancer. Maduro now faces the daunting task of rallying support in a deeply divided country while maintaining unity within his party’s ranks.

Maduro decidedly lacks the vibrant personality that made Chavez a one-man political phenomenon in Venezuela, but he has the advantage of being Chavez’s hand-picked successor.

Venezuelan blogger Daniel, from Venezuela News and Views, was shocked in 2006 when the apparently dimwitted and unimpressive Madura was appointed to the position of Foreign Minister:

This is quite a piece of news, of the astounding sort. For me, the shock is the incredible realization that Nicolas Maduro, a general failure in life has managed to reach two of the highest offices in the country strictly on his servility merits to El Supremo, a.k.a. Hugo Chavez. But also, as a strange relief of sorts, we are left to admire how a totalitarian regime sets itself in place.

Nicolas Maduro

There is really nothing positive to write about him. He is a failed union leader, from the Caracas subway system if memory serves me well. He never did anything smart in his life, and since the press got him as a source of news in 1998, there is nothing I can point that he did that showed creativity, originality or even hard work. He gained weight and got known for his escapades to visit his guru in India, first class ticket of course, at tax payer expense one may presume since he never bothered showing the receipts and even for an assemblyman paycheck, first class tickets to India is quite a bundle.

However he is a semi gifted opportunist and in a political movement full of nullities carried by Chavez own charisma (plus the general management of Cuban advisers) that was a big advantage. He understood very, very early that the way to go was to accept anything that Chavez will do or order. He was handicapped at first because he comes from labor, from the civilian sector that Chavez wanted to destroy the most at the start of his rule. It took Chavez quite a while to trust Maduro. To gain the trust Maduro did several things. One was to live maritally with Cilia Flores, a talibanic pasionara of limited intellect but vociferating abilities and overly dyed red hair. She also was one of the few lawyers that volunteered to help Chavez in 1992. Reports of their trips to the US for shopping sprees, kids on tag, have been numerous.

The second thing Maduro did was to choose wisely his revolutionary career. I suppose that we can give him credit for his self knowledge on his limited managerial skills. That would explain his choice of a parliamentary career, never trying to go elsewhere. Not for him to exert in running for governor, mayor or indicating a wish to work in the executive branch. Maduro knew that for someone lazy, with little interest in day to day management, a seat at the newly formed national assembly was the way to go, in particular with a regime that primed the executive more and more. A sinecure so to speak.

The third thing Maduro did was to organize the “civilian” group within chavismo. In this meaning, “civilian group” meant organizing non military folks that were willing to be as devoted to Chavez, no questions asked, as the military that Chavez so obviously favored. Which admittedly was not much hard work either as all were only too willing to imitate Maduro. Leadership by example if you please. He kept gaining weight.

But Maduro always failed to shine, failed to reach higher positions. This started to change some when he sat patiently at the negotiating table in 2003 to nail the conditions for a recall election. We know what happened, but at least Chavez grateful that his delegates took the heat for him started rewarding them. Maduro abilities for stone walling (due to his poor intellect contrary to what people might believe) were certainly handy for an increasingly authoritarian regime who did not want to discuss any parcel of power.

Maduro started moving up and for the last year of the assembly he became the speaker of the house. By then of course the national assembly had become a redoubt of chavismo where the main objective was to stall the remaining opposition, something that Maduro had shown interest for and some ability in doing. In all fairness under the baton of Maduro things did function better in the assembly in that the opposition was less able to start discussion on law projects as a parliament is supposed to do. Chavez appreciated the lowered noise from the National Assembly and the passing of several controversial laws that one had to pinch one’s nose to vote for. Maduro surely noted who did pinch his or her own nose and those ones did not get the nod to seek a reelection.

Of course after the assembly became monochromatic in 2005 Maduro was confirmed as speaker and speedily made the National Assembly into the Notary Public of the executive, a place where law projects are sent to be speedily voted, no questions asked. Maduro was now a star of the regime, always starved for people who do as told, without any discussion.

Nicolas Maduro Foreign Minister?

I mean, how can such a non-dialogue person, someone that cannot even speak proper Spanish, someone that probably knows little geography, less history and has no obvious ability in understanding complex international issues be named Foreign Minister?

Well, again his only known qualities: stonewalling and straight face when saying utter nonsense.

So – that’s just one opinion of the new el presidente of Venezuela.

But this report from today would seem to back up Daniel’s assessment that Maduro’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal:

Vice President Nicolas Maduro said President Hugo Chavez’s enemies had poisoned him with cancer before announcing that two US Air Force officials would be expelled from the country for spying on the military and plotting to destabilize the country.

Maduro identified one American as the Air Force attaché and said he had 24 hours to leave the country.

“We are aware of the allegations made by Venezuelan Vice President Maduro over state-run television in Caracas, and can confirm that our Air Attache, Col. David Delmonico, is en route back to the United States,” spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Elias Jaua later announced that two Air Force officials in total had been named “persona non grata” and were being kicked out of Venezuela, AFP reports.

Maduro also accused President Hugo Chavez’s enemies of poisoning him with the cancer he has been battling for nearly two years.

“Behind all of [the plots] are the enemies of the fatherland,” he said on state television.

Let’s not act all superior over here. We’ve got Democrat clowns in Congress every bit as ridonkulous as that guy. Hell, take a look at our own VP…

I was thinking exactly the same thing about Biden ND reading through that.

Gotta tell ya, his disgusting debate with Paul Ryan is up there on my list of most gaggable moments in human history-I despise Scarbough but man did he let Krugman have it the other night-a moment like that from Ryan would have been wonderful

Agreed! Republicans need to have spines of steal if their going to run for president. They’re not just running against one man – but the whole left-wing media complex. Gingrich showed them how to do it during the primary, too.

Yes sireee, Newt had me on my feet several times-it’s bad enough that we ALWAYS agree to have these REgressive mods(Candy Crowley, gag-o) but to stand there and take their crap puts me in high PO mode.

I guarantee a candidate like Palin or hell, Palin herself would 1) demand a debate with a mod like Levin & 2) actually yaknow, use the damn record of her opponent

The only credit I give to Chavez was the home heating oil assistance program that helped Americans who can’t afford to heat their homes. The issue I have argued with leftists who call Chavez’s record in to question as a dictator, don’t we have a dictator in effect right here in America today? My point is that leftists will slam a world dictator but defend Obama’s absolute authority? A comparison of apples to apples if you ask me.

Hugo Chavez is dead! And you can hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth in Hollywood… My condolences to Sean Penn, Danny Glover, and washed-up has-been Harry Belafonte. If I may observe, I have always wondered if Belafonte, who despises America so vehemently, would have been as successful in his native Jamaica, as he was in these hated United States – with his ludicrous `Calypso’ dance, which he invented out of necessity when the cheap Jamaican bastard tried to sneak under the stall of a paid toilet in New York, in order to avoid having to pay the ten cents! But I digress.

Hugo Chavez, the boastful, uncouth, (Theresa) `Heinz 57 Varieties’ mixed-race mongrel (he was of negro, Carib, Arawak, and – those who have heard his insufferable discourses would say howler monkey – blood), Venezuelan Marxist tin-pot dictator, who came to power through violence and a Coup D’ Etat, wiped his arse with the Venezuelan Constitution which he altered to ensconce himself in the Venezuelan presidency in perpetuity, and won elections by sheer thuggery and intimidation – even threatening to start a civil war in Venezuela if he was not re-elected during the last elections, has had to answer to – if I may use the Hebrew National commercial `cliché’ – a “Higher Authority”! Shame that a Higher Power had to deliver the Venezuelan people from this evil, and no one had the courage to shoot him in the face!

As it is wont with the legacy of all Marxist dictatorships of the `Proletariat’, Hugo Chavez leaves behind oil-rich, and once beautiful and prosperous, Venezuela a broken country – bankrupted, divided, and on the verge of a civil war to expurgate the Marxist evil of the `Revolution of the Resented’, the ne`er-do-well envious, and `class hatred’, he sowed throughout Venezuelan society! Yet for all of Hugo Chavez’s `Hubris’ and socialist bravado, now that a `Higher Judgement’ has been passed on him, all his works are as if but dust in the wind…So be it with all who share his totalitarian godless Marxist values!

Being of Spanish descent, I am proud that the only world leader to have put this insolent Venezuelan monkey in his place, was Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, who fed up with Hugo Chavez’s ignorant ranting at the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, breaking protocol, leaned forward, pointed with his finger at the now deceased contrary Venezuelan tin-pot dictator, and singling him out by saying “tu” boldly told Chavez: “Por que no te callas!” – “Why don’t you shut the f*ck up!” That other groveling world leaders would have had the `cojones’ to put Chavez in his place, as King Juan Carlos so aptly did then!

Hugo Chavez is dead. Praise be to God, and good riddance!

I wonder if Barack Obama will fly the American flag at half-mast at the White House, in mourning…